Tuesday, April 01, 2008

April 1 2008 -Philadelphia- Pennsylvania secretary of the commonwealth Pedro Cortes announced that thousands of voting machines were malfunctioning. In a press conference late Tuesday evening he stated,"Simply put, they (the voting machines) won't start up. We are working closely with the manufacturer Diebold to solve this problem. However, due to the large number of machines affected we are forced to postpone the Democratic primaries until all volunteers are trained to process paper ballots or all of the machines are repaired whichever happens first."..."All voting machines will be repaired as soon as possible however the cost of retraining volunteers would have to be covered by the Pennsylvania Democratic Party."...Following an emergency meeting party chairman T.J Rooney issued the following statement," The costs of retraining exceeds the amount of funds we have on hand. We have, however, brought this matter to the attention of party's national leadership and expect it to be resolved soon. Rest assured that we will do everything possible to ensure that all Democrats can vote in a timely manner."...A spokesperson for Diebold could not be reached for comment.

That means the primary season lull will be even longer. I've spoken before on the dangers electronic voting machines and the problem in PA only serves to highlight my previous points. Simply put when it comes to something as complicated as voting follow the K.I.S.S. rule. Keep it simple stupid. However this situation greatly works on Obama's favor. Since he is the underdog in PA it will allow him more time to stump around the state and drum up support. That may make this a very close race. Ironically it may work out so that Diebold's error may ultimately prove to have more to do with Clinton's undoing than any of Obama's fine rhetoric.